Who hasn’t screamed at the monitor when a faltering internet connection disrupted an otherwise good online match? No matter how powerful and gaming-oriented a PC is, sometimes lag is inevitable. To try and minimize these problems, BigFoot Networks released the Killer Xeno Pro, a network card sold by EVGA that takes control of the internet away from Windows and manages the bandwith to the user’s gaming needs. The operation is a bit complex but the purpose of this test is to see if it delivers what it promises.

click to enlargeFigure 1: The Killer Xeno Pro.

The Killer Xeno Pro is in itself a PCI Express x1 Gigabit Ethernet card with a network port, a USB 2.0 port, and two audio input/output. It has a dedicated 400 MHz PowerPC processor with 128 MB of DDR2 RAM. Installation is a breeze: just plug it in an available PCI Express slot, disable the on-board network card (either through Windows Control Panel or BIOS setup) and install the Killer Xeno Pro driver so it can take over network management.